Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday the country has made significant progress toward implementing the nuclear deal with Iran, saying Iran has “literally shipped out its capacity currently to build a nuclear weapon.”

Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that the Senate’s inability to bring a vote to the floor to fill a number of vacant diplomatic positions is hurting the nation’s efforts against the Islamic State.

The White House is rejecting a Canadian company’s application to build the Keystone XL pipeline, sounding a death knell for the controversial project that has long pitted President Barack Obama against Republicans and the energy industry.

A senior Democrat on the Finance Committee and former Foreign Relations Committee member, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., has been in conversation with the State Department on countering the finance activities of the Islamic State.

Ahead of the Syria talks in Vienna on Friday, Casey voiced his concern that the governments of Iran and Russia “continue to offer a lifeline to a murderous Assad.” He noted they have been in “clear violation” of U.N. Security Council resolutions in the past and therefore, the intentions of charting a diplomatic path on Syria with Iran and Russia should be made clear: Syrian president Bashar al-Assad must go.

State Department Spokesman John Kirby confirmed on Tuesday that the U.S. “anticipates” Iran to take part in the multilateral talks on Syria scheduled for the end of this week in Vienna, but would not comment on if the U.S. officially invited Iran.